Rail ticket booking fiasco

Passengers are unable to buy tickets for some trains due to travel only a fortnight later because of a breakdown of the reservations system.

Train companies claim the problems are the fault of Network Rail, the engineering company in charge of

repairs on the line. They say they are unable to sell tickets very far in advance because Network Rail is not giving enough notice of when lines are going to be closed.

But Network Rail hit back by insisting operators were not sending their revised timetables through quickly enough.

Passenger watchdogs slammed the failure of the system. A spokesman for the Rail Passengers' Council said: "We have asked the rail regulator to sort this out, because Network Rail and the train companies are just blaming each other. It is not good enough - passengers are the ones that are suffering."

The Evening Standard put five routes to the test and discovered that bookings beyond a few weeks away were difficult to secure. First Great Western was unable to confirm sales for weekend rail services from London to Cardiff beyond 13 February. Virgin West Coast admits passengers will have to pay more as it cannot guarantee bookings for journeys two weeks in advance. GNER could not confirm bookings yet for weekend journeys to Edinburgh next month.

A spokeswoman for the Association of Train Operating Companies said: " Network Rail is obligated to provide 12 weeks notice of engineering work, but they are not coming up with that full information to train operating companies and this has been an issue for quite some time."

A spokesman for Network Rail insisted action was being taken and said the current horizon for advance booking averages four weeks across the network.

He said: "There is more engineering work than ever before and more trains running on a smaller network, so putting together a timetable is more complicated.

"We have put in more resources for planning timetables and we are getting better each week with advance bookings.

"But it cuts both ways. If we are doing engineering works, the train companies need to tell us how the timetable should be altered, but we are not getting this in good time to confirm the information for passengers."

Passengers on the West Coast Mainline face higher prices as better value 14-day advance tickets sometimes never become available. The latest available weekend tickets Virgin West Coast could offer to Manchester are for 19 February.

But the operator could not guarantee availability of its 14-day advance from London to Manchester, which is ?24 return. It means people will have to pay more, as prices go up to ?34 for the sevenday advance return - and ?44 for tickets purchased three days in advance.

A spokesman said: "We need to have detailed information about the engineering work.

"Passengers rightly get annoyed because we can't guarantee they can buy 14-day advance tickets.

"We are very disappointed because it has the effect of putting people off rail travel."

Network Rail still has an ongoing programme of engineering work north of Crewe at weekends, which is responsible for the problems with advance ticket sales on the West Coast Mainline.

It follows a catastrophic breakdown at Christmas when people were unable to book travel for the festive period a week before departure in some cases.

The target for a 12-week advance booking system is September this year. A meeting is due next week between Network Rail, the Association of Train Operating Companies and the Office of Rail Regulation to discuss the problems.